"Do you mean to tell me that your name will be presented in the caucus?"
"That's precisely what I mean."
"Of course you'll try to buy votes with the Challoner money you have."
"I'll get the votes--never fear."
"Try it, then--I'll match you dollar for dollar."
"Not with dollars coined from Cradlebaugh's, nor from corruptions,"
declared Murgatroyd.
Thorne's eyes narrowed.
"Murgatroyd," said he, "you reckon without your host--no matter who owns
Cradlebaugh's--or runs it. The organisation has its finger on every
Grand Jury, every petit jury, every judge. You can't accomplish the
impossible until you've beaten Peter Broderick and the organisation, and
until you do this you can't beat me--you can't prove your
assertions--your hands are tied. The organisation backs me up."
"If your name," retorted Murgatroyd deliberately, "is presented for
Senator, it will be withdrawn; and mine will be presented in its place."
"Who'll present it?" sneered Thorne.
"That," smiled Murgatroyd, mysteriously, "is my business and not yours.
But inasmuch as you told me your story, Thorne," he went on, "let me
tell you mine now. All my life I've struggled like the devil to get the
things I wanted; and I failed. But a big change is about to take
place--here and now. You stop right here; and where you stop, I begin.
It's my turn! The things you want--I want. Your surest and your best
desires are my desires. If you've got them in your hand, as you think
you have, why then--" he clenched his hands--"I'll take them away from
you. The time has come, Thorne, when you are going to get the things
that you don't want,--and you are going to get them hard. I'm going to
get the things you want, yes, and by George, I'll get you too! That's
all I've----"
Murgatroyd did not finish; Thorne had departed.
The next day at four o'clock there was a resounding rap on the
prosecutor's private office door.
"Come in!" said Murgatroyd.
The door opened, and Peter Broderick came puffing into the room with
perfect nonchalance. He had had a day to think things over, and he had
made up his mind that the outburst of the prosecutor had been all
bluster. Seizing a chair, he drew it up to the desk and sat down,
saying:--
"I never refuse an invitation to see a man alone; and now that we are
alone, I don't mind telling you that I'm ready for another one of them
good cigars."
The prosecutor passed a box, from which Broderick helped himself to a
cigar, lit it, and after sending a few clouds of smoke in the air, went
on:--
"Do you know, Murgatroyd, that I haven't had a good chance to talk to
you since the Challoner case--you've been so blamed offish all the time.
But now, here I am sittin' here with you,--you, the only mugwump in the
town that I ever used to be afraid of,--and you know I can say any
blamed thing I please to you, and you got to take it and say nothin'. Do
you know that I'm one of the few that believe the truth about that
bribe?"
Murgatroyd smiled.
"In other words, you think we're both in the same boat--is that it?"
"Not a bit of it!" returned Broderick. "I'm in a coal barge; you're in a
motor boat. Why, Murgatroyd, there's many a man been in honest politics
all his life, like me, for instance, and who's never pulled out three
quarters of a million! Not much! And out of one deal, too! Why, look at
me?" he went on glibly, "I've been in a lot of deals; but that gets me!
Three quarters of a million and more on just one deal! Confound it, man,
do you know the most I ever made out of any one deal?"
Murgatroyd lit a cigar, leaned back in his chair and inquired in an
offhand manner:--
"How much?"
Broderick shook his finger at him.
"Foxy, foxy boy! Do you think I'd give up to you so easy? This
particular deal I'm tellin' you about, is away back outside the statute
of limitations. You couldn't get me on it if you would. It was the
Terwilliger tract--I was chairman of the common council, finance
committee, you remember? Bought the tract for twenty-five hundred and
sold it to the city for two hundred and eighty thousand. That's me!"
"Good work!" said Murgatroyd, with genuine admiration. "I didn't know
that you were in on that."
"In on it?" snorted Broderick. "I was the whole show! That's where I'm
coy, my dear boy; it takes Broderick to do these things; but it takes a
bigger man than Broderick to find 'em out."
Murgatroyd shook his head.
"They found _me_ out, all right," he said.